Tag Archives: Settlements

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This is a huge victory! Moments ago, Airbnb announced they will no longer list vacation rentals in illegal Jewish-only West Bank settlements. It’s been exactly two years since we took the stage at Airbnb Open to confront actor Ashton Kutcher. “Airbnb is profiting off the displacement of Palestinians and human rights abuses.”

The Airbnb campaign showed that when we work together, WE WIN. The Stolen Homes coalition that formed over two years ago to work on getting Airbnb out of the settlements, included us, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Sum of Us and more. Together we protested, wrote articles and took to social media. Today our persistence paid off. Every single person who supported this campaign deserves credit and that means you!

It took an international effort to end institutionalised racism in my country – now it must happen again, for the Palestinian people

Relatives of 12-year-old Faris Hafez al-Sarasawi at his funeral. He was killed after Israeli soldiers’ intervention in the ‘Great March of Return’ demonstrations in Gaza, October 2018. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

My grandfather, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, would have turned 100 this year. The world is marking the centenary of his birth and celebrating his leadership in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. But while my country has long been free from racist minority rule, the world is not yet free of the crime of apartheid.

Like Madiba and Desmond Tutu before me, I see the eerie similarities between Israel’s racial laws and policies towards Palestinians, and the architecture of apartheid in South Africa. We South Africans know apartheid when we see it. In fact, many recognise that, in some respects, Israel’s regime of oppression is even worse.

Apartheid is defined in international law as an “institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other”. It is about unequal racial power relations upheld by unjust laws that are intended to deny oppressed groups their rights.

Since 2006 the speaker has been spending from one to three months per year accompanying Palestinian children to school past Israeli settler checkpoints in the village of Tuwani and the surrounding South Hebron Hills of the West Bank. She initially volunteered with Christian Peacemaking Teams, but more recently has served with the Italian organization Operation Dove, both of which began their work in Tuwani at the invitation of the village and in response to Israeli settler attacks on schoolchildren and shepherds. She will speak about her experiences and current developments in Palestine.

Nebi Saleh, West Bank — Two days after her release from an Israeli jail, the 17-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi sat in her parents’ yard, wearing jeans and a tired expression, the front of her mane of blond curls tied in a bun atop her head.

TV crews from the United States, Turkey, Germany and Norway vied for on-camera interviews with her. Since her release, her representatives say, she has responded to questions from about 175 media outlets. She has six media advisors, one of them Israeli, and they have worked hard to make her the face of the Palestinian resistance.

In December, Israeli authorities detained Ahed, then 16, after she was filmed slapping and kicking a soldier. She had just learned that a cousin had been shot and wounded with a rubber bullet by Israeli soldiers. It was not her first time in the spotlight: She had been filmed confronting soldiers in 2012 and again in 2015.

Video of the 2017 incident went viral, igniting an international debate about the nature of nonviolent resistance, the behavior of the soldier — who did not react — and the legality of child arrests.

She is, by now, the most recognized member of the Tamimi family, whose 300-plus members populate the tiny West Bank hamlet of Nebi Saleh. Her family has gained fame and notoriety for the weekly Friday protests her father, Bassem, leads against encroachment from a neighboring Jewish settlement.

This weekend is the Presbyterian Church’s biannual General Assembly. Among the many social justice issues they will address is a resolution calling on real estate giant RE/MAX to stop facilitating property sales in illegal Israeli settlements.

In 2016, right before the last Presbyterian Church General Assembly, RE/MAX founder and then-CEO Dave Liniger announced that the company would stop receiving revenues from settlement properties. But they continue to allow their Israeli franchise to rent and sell settlement houses, and they continue to include settlement properties in their global database. With your help, this time we will succeed in getting RE/MAX to fully extricate themselves from Israel’s settlement enterprise. Add your name to the letter we are sending to current CEO Adam Contos at this year’s General Assembly!

There is no question about the illegality of Israeli settlements. They violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says that an occupying power may not move its people onto the land it is occupying. Numerous UN resolutions have been passed calling for Israel to stop settlement construction. Numerous reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others have been published citing the direct role settlements play in human rights abuses against Palestinians and calling on companies like RE/MAX to immediately cease all settlement business.

We have been protesting RE/MAX’s involvement in Israeli crimes since 2014. We have held rallies outside RE/MAX offices and at the RE/MAX, LLC headquarters in Denver. We have disrupted RE/MAX conventions and shareholder meetings. We know we are close to a win. Now, it is time for the final push. Join our letter to RE/MAX, LLC telling them to immediately remove settlement listings from their global database and end all complicity in Jewish-only Israeli settlements.

Towards freedom and equality in Palestine,
Ariel and everyone at CODEPINK

Rescheduled from April 27. Stop by to see UW SJP’s display memorializing 70 years of occupation and devastation that stills continues today in Palestine. We will be handing out literature and you can find out how you can get involved in the cause. Hope to see you all there!

On Sunday, February 25, church leaders from the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic churches in Jerusalem shut down the Church of the Holy Sepulcher until further notice. They did so in protest of a new municipal law demanding that church leaders pay over $190 million to the state of Israel in back taxes on church properties that were formerly tax exempt.

The new law is part of an ongoing campaign to target and push out Palestinians in the holy city of Jerusalem. We stand with these church leaders in their boycott of this gross injustice, which is meant to make it more difficult if not impossible for Palestinian Christians to continue to live in Jerusalem. Sacred lands are never for sale. We raise outcry over the mass displacement of all Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian, from Jerusalem. We support the leadership of the churches in boycotting injustice, and we call on church leaders around the world to follow their lead, heeding international calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions on Israel until it complies with basic standards of international law and ends its decades long campaign to wipe out the indigenous Palestinian population.

Statements From Church Leaders in Jerusalem

FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. POLITICAL PERSECUTION LEADS TO THE CLOSURE OF CHRISTIANITY’S HOLIEST SITE

The leaders of Jerusalem’s churches have today announced the unprecedented decision to close the Church of the Holy Sepulchre until further notice, in protest at persistent moves to intimidate Christians and discriminate against churches in the Holy Land. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which dates back to the fourth century, is considered to contain the sites of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, making it the holiest site in the world for Christians. Continue reading →

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Random Quotes

Land on the West Bank is slowly being dragged from Palestinian control. Slowly, slowly push "them" back and back until the land is empty ― as some have pretended it was from the start. ― Yom Hashoah, Yom Yerushalayim, Irena Klepfisz